Thomas,
please provide some details...
Is it 64-bit or 32-bit OS?
What toolchain was used? Do you have msys/cygwin? Versions? Do you use profiling?
can you start pty process outside the IDE (in shell's terminal, cd to netbeans/ide/bin/nativeexecution/Windows-x86/ and run ./pty)?
Are you getting this error every time you try to start the project, or it's just a single failure?
Alexander,
are you able to reproduce the problem? (I've just tried on my Win7 distribution and it works)
Thanks,
=Andrew

I'm running Win 7 in Virtual Box on my Mac. I believe it is a 32 bit version. I'm using Cygwin and MinGW, and I believe it is happening with both chains (has the tool chain anything to do with running a simple app as Welcome?). I'm using all standard setup so profiler is enabled and it is (was) happening every time I tried to run it (Welcome). Will try again with today's version and see if it is reproducible and re-open if it is.

OK, here are the details:
Using Win 7 32 bit version on Virtual Box image on a MAC
Using Cygwin and MinGW and it fails with both tool chains (tool chain probably doesn't matter when running a simple app like Welcome).
It happens every time I run in terminal Window
It works fine in standard output window.
./pty in netbeans/ide/bin/nativeexecution/Windows-x86 doesn't run in my MSys terminal window. See attached screen shot.
./pty does run in my cygwin termina window.
I installed a build and ran it from the desktop icon and it fails too. Not sure how MinGW is involved here.
If I run NetBeans from a MinGW window, it also doesn't work.
I opened the bug again. Please feel free to downgrade or close if you think it is an isolated case.

Upgraded Cygwin to
CYGWIN_NT-6.1 thp-PC 1.7.7(0.230/5/3) 2010-08-31 09:58 i686 Cygwin
and now it works. So, please feel free to close as 'using unsupported version' is that is the case. Or perhaps pty should be relinked with older Cygwin library to be compatible?

Cygwin 1.7.* should be used on Windows 7 instead of 1.5.* which was developed before Windows 7. At the same time users on WinXP/Vista can continue using cygwin 1.5.* (WinXP SP3 is a primary NB 7.0 platform).